Our first WOSM user-developer conference (WOSM DevCon1) was held at Warwick June 22nd 2016. Details here.

The WOSM story

The WOSM (Warwick Open Source Microscope) is a super-stable
physical platform and control interface for high resolution optical microscopy.
Our idea was to have a fresh look at optical microscope design, aiming to
make something that was as solid and as optically straightforward as possible,
consistent with being able to work at or very close to the theoretical limit of
optical resolution. We were also frustrated by current microscope control
interfaces and wanted to take a fresh look at that as well.

Soon after we first started working on the designs, we realised that they would be useful not just to us but to lots of other people too, and we decided to make them open source.

WOSM-tirf layout

Where can I buy one?

At this stage you can't, but like many similar open source hardware projects we will
provide documentation and source files so you can build your own.

What can it do?

The high stability makes WOSM a great base for the development of superresolution and single molecule microscopy.
WOSM reference designs will make up the central core of the source repositories. The first reference design will be
a TIRF microscope, with darkfield and laser tweezers projects to follow from that.

The source to be made available will include microscope hardware design files (CAD source, engineering drawings, 3D printer STL files),
web based control electronics (schematics, gerber files, C-based source and flashable firmware binaries, HTML control source)
and PC based image aquisition software.

Who is it for?

Early adopters will need reasonable technical skills and ideally some experience in
microscope dis/assembly. As this project progresses, documentation will reach a stage where non-specialists will be able to build their own. This microscope is designed to be versatile and easy to modify. Modification and hacking the reference designs is positively encouraged! We will also encourage contributions to source documentation from bug reports/fixes to new projects.

When can I have one?

We are recruiting for our 'inner circle' of initial user-developer partners. Contact Nick Carter or Rob Cross if you are interested.